Friday, June 29, 2007

in the beginning...

The 2007 USC Asia Study Abroad Program, in conjunction with Universiti Malaya, is designing and funding a k-6 school located in Krabei Riel just outside Siem Reap, Cambodia.

As the students, we've created this blog to chronicle our progress.

To get the project started our Professor, James Steel, divided us into five groups (Project Management, Documentation, Site, Program, Precedents+Technology), gave us a loose program, and has allowed us to take charge from there.

On June 14th, after a morning of temple treking (Siem Reap is also home to the Ankgor temples), we got to visit Krabei Riel. As soon as we turned off the main road onto a smaller dirt one, we were in a completely different world. Our school is part of that world.

It was founded in 1979, but the two existing concrete structures weren't built until 1996 (which leads one to wonder what facilities were like those first 20 years...). Right now there are two buildings, in total housing 6 classrooms, an office and a (tiny) library. Because of overcrowding, they have built a large hut to house two extra classes, as well as two smaller ones acting as a kitchen and snack stand. The bathrooms are outhouses at the back of the site, but the children opt to make quicker trips behind the buildings or by the fence. (The fence is the very child-friendly barbed wire.) There is no electricity and no running water: the buildings are open air and the children hand pump water from the ground. There are 7 teachers, with one acting as head administrator. These teachers are there all day, but the students change. Because it is typical in Cambodia, and there is not space to accommodate everyone, there are separate morning and afternoon students of varying school levels.

Fortunately, we were able to interrupt a class and ask a few questions. When we asked what any student could have, if they could have anything, a boy simpy replied, "a book," A teacher added he also wished the children had fields. Sinec the school is surrounded by rice fields, the ground is either marshy-grass or dirt. Neither of which is suitable for playing soccer.



Communication was difficult since the teachers did not speak English fluently and our questions probably seemed extremely foreign. It must seem like such a stretch to them, the promist of a new facility, but it doesn't feel that way to us any longer. Our individual school experiences have been so different from these children's; it seems unfair they should have anything less. It is exciting to be part of a project (for school, no less) that will undoubtedly improve lives, lives of the next generation.




Since setting up camp in Kuala Lumpur at the Universiti of Malaya we've been gathering as much information as we can find, particularly gearing towards the Malaysia students taking our unanswered questions with them on their site visit July 12.